Help! Every email I send has two unknown attachments

We occasionally get complaints from users that mail they send has two unknown attachments, usually named image001.wmz and image001.gif. When the attachments are viewed, they look like they could be used for bullets.

These are not caused by viruses, trojans, infections or anything nefarious. You do not need to run Detect & Repair. It simply means that you (or the sender) is using Word as the editor and have it configured to add a header, footer or otherwise customized the template.

Note: This specific fix is for Outlook 2003 only. It is the only version that uses normal.dot as the email template.

How to fix

Close Word and Outlook. Locate Normal.dot template file on your file system and rename or delete it. Word will recreate the normal template the next time you open it. (If you have macros in Word, rename the template.)

Type or paste %appdata%\Microsoft\Templates into the address bar of Windows Explorer to open the Template folder and delete or rename Normal.dot.

You can also fix it by turning off Word as the editor (Outlook 2003 and earlier). This setting is in Tools, Options, Mail Format tab.

Outlook Email Template History

Outlook 2003 is the only version that uses normal.dot as the email template. Previous versions of Outlook, when Word is used as the editor, use the email.dot template stored in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICExx\1033. Unfortunately, this causes stability issues (understatement!) and many, many users disable Word as the email editor in the older versions.

In order to stabilize Word as an email editor, Outlook 2003 uses the normal template, the same template Word uses. This helped to reduce crashes but the law of unintended consequences popped up: when certain Word add-ins were installed, users were always asked to save the template. It was confusing because they did not make changes to the template. See Tip 341: Save Normal.dot? for more information about this annoyance.

Beginning with Outlook 2007, the email template is NormalEmail.dotm. It's stored in %appdata%\Microsoft\Templates too.